Idler roller conveyors are widely used to support the movement of objects to, through, or from workstations. In spite of extensive use for many different applications, idler roller conveyors can still cause serious problems. Many of these problems are caused by misalignment of conveyors with respect to workstations so that objects being moved over the rollers tend to move from their intended paths. These problems often occur from the way idler roller conveyors are manually set up relative to workstations. This is often done by eyeball positioning of a conveyor oriented in the intended direction of movement of an object.
Slight angular misalignments can easily occur as idler roller conveyors are manually set up. They can also be misaligned even when they are fixed in place by system design. The effects of minor misalignments of infeed or outfeed conveyors can cause surprisingly large and clearly undesirable forces (forces perpendicular to the intended conveyor path) which urge an object to veer away from its intended direction of travel. We aim to minimize such forces and the harm they cause.
An example of such a problematic system is an off-feed idler roller conveyor that supports boards as they are being fed through a table saw. Ideally, such boards should move parallel to and against a saw fence, but, it is difficult to precisely align existing roller conveyor systems accurately to a table saw fence, especially if the alignment is done manually. If not aligned accurately, the rollers will apply transverse forces to the board being moved through the saw. The transverse forces can greatly affect the system's functionality by urging the object away from its desired path. This can lead to poor quality cutting and operator safety problems. Many devices such as feather boards and spring loaded elastomer biasing wheels (Board Buddies) are available for table saws to help overcome such forces. These devices have to be very aggressive when used with existing roller conveyor systems due to the large forces they must counter.
We aim at greatly reducing forces that must be overcome by such devices, thus making their design simpler and less aggressive. Such reduction in these forces also makes it easier to move objects through a system with less chance for damage to materials or injury to people.